Official BS UFO Explanations.

[Karl12]

• Michigan, March, 1966.

The Michigan UFO wave of March, 1966 where multiple town residents and police officers witnessed objects 'covered with red, green and blue lights zooming about at tree-top level' - one object even buzzed a police patrol car and the local sheriff stated that 'reports of UFOs have become so numerous recently that I haven't slept in 24 hours'.

Washtenaw County sheriffs and police in neighboring jurisdictions reported disc-shaped objects moving at fantastic speeds and making sharp turns, diving and climbing, and hovering. At one point, four UFOs in straight-line formation were observed. Selfridge AFB confirmed tracking UFOs over Lake Erie at 4:56 a.m. Their stories were backed up by more than 100 witnesses.

Newspaper archives:

Pic

1966 UFO Sightings | Ann Arbor District Library (scroll down)

UFOs at close sight: Hillsdale, Michigan, 1966, the Swamp Gas affair.

Bluebook explanation

'Swamp gas'



Possible origin of Dr Hynek´s 'swamp gas' explanation:

In interviewing Washtenaw County Sheriff Doug Harvey for the article, the former Sheriff explained how he had taken Hynek to the Frank Mannor farm near Dexter for some on site investigation. The sheriff described how Hynek interviewed witnesses and sloshed around in the swamp for a time in an attempt to determine what the many witnesses had seen a few nights earlier. The Sheriff then brought Hynek back to the Sheriff's headquarters located in Ann Arbor.

According to Harvey, they talked for a time about the sighting and Hynek admitted he didn't know what the witnesses had seen on the Mannor farm.

"That's when the phone call came in," Harvey told me.

"What phone call I asked?"

Harvey said, "it was a call for Hynek and it was from Washington."

"How did you know it was from Washington," I replied.

"Because the dispatcher stepped into the office and said, 'Dr. Hynek, you've got a call from Washington.'"

Harvey told me that Hynek stepped out of the office to take the call and then returned in a few minutes looking a bit perplexed. And then, according to the sheriff, Hynek said, "it's swamp gas they saw, swamp gas."

It was a short time later that Hynek held the infamous press conference at the Detroit Press Club and suggested that a possible explanation for the recent sightings might have been marsh or swamp gas. The explanation became a front page story the next day in papers across the country and Hynek became the butt of jokes and cartoons. He was ridiculed to such an extent that Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford (later President Ford) asked for a Congressional investigation. It was one of Hynek's worst moments.